Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Hester, I have a modest proposal. I was talking to a friend of mine, a politically connected tradesman and a marine retired from service. Everyone should be advised that there is no such thing as an ex-marine. I doubt this is true in all cases, but marines, when they grow old, tend to lose some conventional inhibitions. I suppose that’s true of most of us. Conventions can be a smothering blanket, but in the winter one wants warmth. Inhibitions gone, friends are the next to ditch us. Anyway, my marine friend is full of salty expressions. Comradeship arouses in men, especially when engaged in battle or sports, the scatological imperative. People, he says, think politicians are helpful – compassion and do-goodism is after all in their job specs -- and so people turn to them when in distress, even when the distress is caused by the self-same politicians. But, my friend says, politicians the world over are concerned chiefly with acquiring power and utilizing it to their be...

There was a point during the Cheshire murder trial when one of the defense attorneys representing accused murderer Joshua Komisarjevsky became concerned that small pins worn by family members of the murder victims might unduly prejudice the jury against their client. The judge in the case, Jon Blue, ruled that the pins were not so indiscrete as to trip the prejudices of jurors. The pin challenge by the defense followed by some months the publication of an interview Mr. Komisarjevsky gave to a reporter while incarcerated that was, the First Amendment still being the law of the land, widely covered by several state newspapers. The Komisarjevsky prison interview was fashioned into a hastily written book that found its way into libraries across the state. An effort was made, unsuccessfully, to pry the book from the hands of aggressive librarians conversant with the First Amendment. Mr. Komisarjevsky, a very talkative fellow, also made a statement to police shortly after he was appreh...

Rep. Michael Lawlor, co-chairman along with Sen. Andrew McDonald of Connecticut’s Judiciary Committee, has indicated he might resurrect House Bill 5473 in the new session. HB 5473, which bordered on a bill of attainder, was defeated in the legislature during the last term, and even Mr. McDonald, who tends to march in lockstep with co-confederate Lawlor, voted against the measure. Bills of attainder, legislation carefully crafted to apply narrowly to specific targets, and ex post facto laws are proscribed by the U.S. Constitution. There will always be occasions for violations of the letter or spirit of the Constitution, and the occasion that launched HB 5473 was particularly horrendous. A doctor who had practiced out of St. Francis Hospital in Hartford was accused of having molested young children in the 1960s. His deeds came to light when the wall of a house in which the doctor had lived, then under reconstruction, was torn down and a cache of pictures and films of young children ...

Republicans who lean to the right in Connecticut are used to running the knout. This is because the mainstream media in the state is 99 and 9/10 percent pure liberal or, as timid liberals now prefer to call themselves, progressive. But there are two kinds of Republicans in Connecticut. Among a certain kind of Republican, prolonged exposure to the knout produces an amused weariness best glimpsed in the famous Reagan remark, “There you go again.” Reagan ran the knout, put salve on his wounds and lived to fight another day. Battling made him more resolute because he was not entirely absorbed by political considerations alone. He had a life. He was amused by the opposition. He had a flag to defend, and he defended it stoutly. He could boast, along with other principled warriors, that there were no scars on his back, while his front was loaded with them. For a host of reasons, there are very few Republicans of this kind in Connecticut. Politicians running for office really do, when al...

The day after the great debate between Sen. Joe Biden and Alaska Governor Sarah Palin, everyone was prepared to pass judgment. I didn’t catch the debate. My wife Andrée had arranged for us to see at UConn the Bolt play, “A Man For All Seasons.” And so when the two bumped heads, we found ourselves in the sold out Nafe Katter Theatre's packed house watching Michael McKensie, playing St. Thomas More, scowling at Thomas Cromwell’s pragmatism: “ALICE: They say he's a very penetrating lawyer. “MORE: What, Cromwell? Pooh, he's a pragmatist-and that's the only resemblance he has to the Devil, son Roper; a pragmatist, the merest plumber.” McKensie spat the word “pragmatist” far out into the second row. It is an explosive line and ought to remind us, in this the age of pragmatism and cynicism, that once there was something more honorable than reasons of state. After viewing the debate, what strikes me most forcefully is how wrong everyone was about Palin, except of course the peo...

There’s something to be said for the vigorous application of bad laws; it’s the best way to get rid of them. The anti- capital punishment forces here in Connecticut want state prosecutors to develop a standard for the prosecution of those who commit capital felonies. Once the standard is established, it must be uniformly applied by all prosecutors in the state. A prosecution in which the standard is not uniformly applied then may be contested in court as being selective and falling outside the governing rule, providing plaintiffs accused of capital felonies with yet another useful arrow in their already crowded quiver. Should Connecticut appellate courts agree with those now arguing that the absence of a standard for prosecution in capital felony cases is on its face unconstitutional, one need not argue the guilt or innocence of the murderer; one need only show that a prosecutor in a different district unconnected with the case had failed to prosecute in a similar instance. A consisten...